at the boarding-house. In the evening, when the pier was lighted
and the band played, and the summer life of the place was at its
giddiest, she would arrive with her comfortable smile and her knitting
to sit within earshot of her sleeping grandson while his parents went
out to enjoy themselves.

Marie did not know what she would have done without the wise woman
upon this holiday; but when they talked together she was still shy of
confidences, and still reluctant to admit any but the most modern
interpretation of the married relationship. Mrs. Amber, however, saw
all there was to see and felt no resentment about it. Things were so;
and they always had been. You might be miserable if you were married,
but then you would have been far more miserable if you had not
married. She pitied all spinsters profoundly. She was glad her
daughter had found a husband and a home; and she would not have
dreamed of combating Osborn. He was that strange, wilful despotic
thing, a man. She would have handed him without contest that dangerous
weapon of complete power over a woman and her children. Mrs. Amber
propitiated Osborn; she pleased and flattered him; and her judgment of
him was that he was far better than he might have been.

Grannie travelled back with them to town, and she was very useful
during the journey. She kept a strict eye upon the hand-luggage and
nursed the baby, while Marie and Osborn smiled together over the
sketches in a humorous weekly. Their money was all spent, and they
were really half-relieved to be going back to the flat, where they
need not keep up that air of being so very pleased with every detail
of a rather strained holiday. They would meet other people they knew,
who had similarly enjoyed themselves, and would cry:

"Have _you_ been away? We're just back. We went to Littlehampton
and had a gorgeous time! We had such awf'ly comfortable rooms, not
actually _on_ the front, but within a minute's walk. We
_prefer_ rooms to an hotel. We enjoyed ourselves tremendously.
Where did you go?"

Mrs. Amber was with Marie a great deal during the rest of that hot
summer; she had waited for the close intimacy of the honeymoon time,
of the first year, to wear away; she had bided her hour very
patiently. When the husband began--as he would--to go out for an hour
after dinner, just to meet a friend, and would stay two--three, four
hours perhaps, then the mother had come into her own again. Sitting
with the strangely-quieten